


Friday Night Social

by Sholio



Category: The Defenders (Marvel TV)
Genre: Developing Friendships, Drinking, Fluff, Friendship, Gen, Post-Canon, Team Bonding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-24
Updated: 2020-12-24
Packaged: 2021-03-11 02:35:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,799
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28037778
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sholio/pseuds/Sholio
Summary: Jessica wants it known that no part of this was her idea.
Relationships: Luke Cage & Jessica Jones & Danny Rand
Comments: 10
Kudos: 72
Collections: Yuletide 2020





	Friday Night Social

**Author's Note:**

  * For [reinventweather](https://archiveofourown.org/users/reinventweather/gifts).



It's not Jessica's idea. She wants that part absolutely clear. 

("Of course not, Jessica," Danny says, not even seeming put out. "You can just show up if you feel like it, or not—"

"You don't even _drink."_

"I do. I mean, I don't _not_ drink. I just feel that my body performs at peak efficiency when I don't put poisons into it."

"Your body is a temple and mine is a dumpster, blah blah, let's pretend we're finished with this conversation before I give in to the temptation to punch you _into_ a dumpster.")

But the invitation is sincere: Danny thinks they should get together for drinks once a week, even if they have no reason to, like say collaborating on pest containment for idiot wannabe supervillains who dress up in ridiculous costumes and plague the city. Whole weeks and even months can go by without anyone called Tinfoil Man or The Alligator trying to rob a bank or blow up the moon or turn the city's sewer alligator population into a mutant army. 

So: Friday night socials. Because of reasons.

Matt tends not to show up all that often, because he's busy with lawyering, or busy brooding on rooftops in red Kevlar, or just out with his actual, _other_ circle of friends. Somehow it still boggles Jessica that, out of all of them, somehow Matthew Murdock is the one who actually _has_ friends.

("I have friends," Danny says when Jessica makes this observation, sounding a little put out. He is drinking a green tea, because he's either somehow managed to find a bar in Manhattan that will make green tea on demand—granted, Manhattan is where such a thing _would_ exist—or brought his own.

"Me too," Luke says.

"Really?" Jessica snaps. Next week, it's her turn to pick the bar and she is damn well picking one with free shots at happy hour and no green tea. "Then why are we all hanging out with each other on Friday nights, then?")

Anyway, their friends _do_ drift in every now and then. Matt brings Karen and Foggy along sometimes, and Luke might invite Misty, and sometimes Danny shows up with Colleen or, one time, his brother, or possibly some other kind of relative, whose name Jessica doesn't catch and who apparently doesn't drink either.

("Is your body a temple too?" Jessica asks him while Luke is soundly thrashing Danny for the twentieth consecutive game of arm wrestling. For some reason Danny's relentless optimism has led him to believe he might actually win one of these times.

Brother or Whatever shakes his head. "Alcoholic."

"Ah, okay, that's—okay," Jessica says, and the conversation crashes into a brick wall and catches on fire. Luckily that's when Matt and Foggy arrive, along with Foggy's girlfriend, and Foggy is an actual extrovert or at least the closest thing this particular group of people has, other than Danny, so there's plenty of chitchat to fill the smoking conversational crater.)

But the annoying thing is, it's really not _just_ that she has nowhere better to be. In fact, she actually turns down repeated offers from Malcolm to come over on Fridays and watch Top Chef with him and Gillian (No. Why. No.) which leads to having to admit to both Malcolm _and_ Gillian that she has a standing Friday night appointment sort of thing, which leads to having to invite them along, and oh _god_ it's true, she has a social life now. Worse than that: she has the kind of bougie social life that involves Friday night drinks with her sort-of-co-workers at bars with names like Patent Pending and Undercote.

(Danny is never allowed to pick the bar again. Seriously. Every one of his choices sounds like the name of a bad alt-rock band and has a gimmick like "pirates.")

In spite of the rotating roster, the core of the group, somehow, is the three of them: Luke, Danny, and herself. She still maintains that it's mostly because they're the only three people in Manhattan who have such a shitty social life that they only have each other to hang out with on Fridays. She maintains it loudly. Luke and Danny have stopped correcting her and just started ignoring her.

And what she hadn't realized about getting together regularly like this is the way that it can become a ... well ... she hates to use some woo-woo term like _touchstone,_ but it really is. She knows what's going on with Luke's nightclub and Danny's dojo. She notices when Danny shows up with new bruises, or Luke with new bullet holes in his hoodie. Worse, it _stings,_ like salt on scraped knuckles. It feels like she should have been there to help out.

Somehow, the Friday drink nights make it easier to just—text, or call. To reach out at other times. 

Granted, the group text tends to result in things like _HELP GUYS CORNERED BY GUNMEN IN RED HOOK ANYBODY AROUND????_ or _Hey, Danny, I've got a few ninjas trussed up in Harlem and I'm not sure I want the cops involved; you know where I can send em?_

But it's nice to know that there's backup. It's a feeling she's not used to having; it's different, even, from Malcolm having managed to finally lure her in with a switch to Thursdays as Netflix binge nights and Top _Gear_ instead of Top _Chef_ (well played, DuCasse, well played). She wants him as far as possible from everything it is that she does, everything she is. She's seen how that life sucks people in, gets people hurt.

The thing about people like Luke and Danny and Matt—the difference between them and everyone else in her life—is that they can handle themselves. She doesn't have to worry about them, at least not quite so much. Luke is literally bulletproof. Matt has damn near come back from the dead once already. And while Danny is, well, Danny (not actually bulletproof, prone to getting into mostly avoidable trouble), he has a catlike ability to get himself out of tight spaces and bounce back from situations that should have killed him. 

She's used to being the only one. The only one like her. The only one who can just bounce back. (Even though she knows from the inside out how much it doesn't help, sometimes, to be stronger and tougher than the people around you. Sometimes it makes things worse.)

It's not just about having backup. It's about having people to talk to about it. She can make an offhand annoyed comment about having to stick her desk drawer handle back on after she accidentally wrenched it off, and have Danny say something like, "Yeah, I punched the door off the refrigerator yesterday," and ... she's not the only one. She doesn't have to guard herself quite so much.

It happens so casually she hardly even notices, but somehow it becomes normal to start in a bar and drift from there to someone's place afterwards. Matt's apartment is more centrally located and is their convening point of choice when there's an actual emergency going on, but their bar-hopping takes them all over the city, so they might end up anywhere afterwards, her office or Danny's living room, Matt's rooftop or Luke's nightclub. While the bar-hopping crowd is just getting started, they'll be away from it all, sitting on Danny's probably authentic Nepalese woven rug and passing around a bottle of booze or drinking cups of tea (hers liberally spiked); or they'll end up sacked out in Luke's upstairs apartment at the nightclub, bass beat thumping through the floor.

She's still completely unprepared for Danny falling asleep with his head in her lap. It's been a really long day, and they're all a little beat up and exhausted, and he just _does that,_ settles down with his head pillowed on her thigh.

"Danny," she says, and gives him a shove, but not too hard. They're sitting on her office floor; she has her back against her desk. "Danny, get off."

"You're comfy," he mumbles.

"I'm not—who even _says_ 'comfy'?" She looks up helplessly at Luke, who just shrugs.

"He's your problem this time."

"Wait, _this time?_ Are you saying he does this with you?"

"You know Danny and personal space," Luke says. He's the only one of the three of them who's actually sitting in a chair, even if he's got it turned around backwards, holding a bottle of bourbon— _her_ bottle of bourbon—by the neck. 

Jessica wordlessly holds her hand out for it. If she's going to be Danny's pillow, she needs to drink to cope.

Instead of just handing it to her, Luke gets down on the floor and settles against the desk beside her, moving Danny's legs to make room. Danny just grumbles and snuggles down in her lap. This is unbelievable. Without speaking, she takes the bottle from Luke's hand.

They sit together in silence. Luke is big and warm; she almost forgot how warm he is, like his body has its own radiator. She can't help thinking about last week, when she'd just gotten drenched in the bay and he stripped off his jacket and draped it over her. It was huge and heavy and warm enough to soak through her cold skin right down to her bones. After a little while, without really meaning to, she lets her shoulder settle against his. 

He is very, very warm.

Neither of them say anything. Outside there's the familiar sound of the evening traffic passing by. Someone's yelling down on the street, too far away to make out the words.

She's spent a lot of nights in this office, getting drunk and falling asleep in her chair. Now she and Luke pass the bottle back and forth. The whiskey burns her throat in a good way. She almost forgot, until these last few months, what it was to drink and enjoy it, not just drink to sand down the world's sharp edges and make her brain shut up.

Now she leans into the pleasant burn of the bourbon. Her high-octane liver is burning it out, as usual, almost as fast as she can drink it, if she drinks in this leisurely way, not chugging. But that's kind of nice. It lets her float along on a warm, pleasant steady state of being just a little bit buzzed, not actually drunk. Enough to appreciate Luke's warm, solid body against hers, and the soft fuzzy weight of Danny's head in her lap.

Danny starts to snore.

"He better not drool in his sleep," she mutters, and feels Luke's shoulder vibrate against hers with a near-silent laugh. He takes the bottle from her without a word, takes a drink, and passes it back.

She's had worse nights.


End file.
